Computer Business Review

GATE DELAYS - AT AIRPORTS - ARE MINIMISED FOR UNITED BY TEXAS INSTRUMENTS' EXPLORER

Apart from the odd story from Japan, there are still very few
reports of artificial intelligence in action, but one such has been
reported by United Airlines Inc and Texas Instruments Inc in a most
unlikely setting - an airport Gate Assignment display system. And
United reports that the system has already reduced travel delays at
Chicago's much-too-busy O'Hare Airport and at Denver's bustling
Stapleton Airport hub in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. The
new system, which has been operating for some months now, was
developed by a combined team of UAL operations and management
personnel and Texas Instruments knowledge engineers. According to
the airline, the system is designed to increase the effectiveness
of United's gate controllers in assigning aircraft to the series of
available gates, thereby reducing those irritating flight delays
that are related to ground operations. At the heart of the Gate
Assignment system is an artificial intelligence program that
captures the combined experience and knowledge of a half-dozen
United operations experts. The knowledge-based system of course
runs on Texas Instruments' Explorer workstations. At O'Hare,
explains United, its gate controller and back-up gate controller
must assign more than 400 flights daily to one of 50 gates. It can
becomes a high-stakes game of musical chairs when weather problems
and other flight delays demand frequent changes in operational
plans. And unique gate restrictions for McDonnell Douglas DC-8
(gosh, is United still using DC-8s?) and DC-10 and Boeing 747
aircraft add further complexity to the gate assignment process.
Previously, the process was handled by experienced staff who relied
on memory and a wall-sized scheduling board full of magnetic
aircraft symbols, to chart arrivals and departures. Janet Wejman,
United's product manager for the gate assignment system, notes that
it was installed in three operational phases, beginning with a
stand-alone system that did not tie in to United's nationwide
Unimatic flight information data system. The gate controllers soon
found they were more effective with the new system than they could
have been with the old manual system, and a phased approach also
enabled them to become more familiar with the system as it was
enhanced. The second phase added a complete view of all gates at
the airport and incorporated many other refinements suggested by
the gate controllers themselves. In July 1987, the interface that
connects the Explorer-based system to the comprehensive Unimatic
system, was implemented at both O'Hare and Stapleton. Now,
Unimatic feeds flight information data directly into GADS, and gate
controllers, in turn, can update this flight information as the
gate assignment plan is changed. The automated phase also provides
minute-by-minute aerial views of all our gates, showing the
location of our aircraft and status information on each flight,
declares a happy Ms Wejman.